Media reform & sustainability on tap in Miami

Strategies to drive citizen engagement and social innovation

I‘ll be one of the speakers at Media2Movements, a gathering in Miami on Wednesday that will focus on the escalating changes in the mediasphere.

Put on by Ashoka and underwritten by the Knight Foundation, Media2Movements will bring together a number of new media luminaries, including old friends Kara Andrade, Karen Worcman of Brazil’s Museum of the Person, Brian Conle of Small World News and Emily Jacobi of Digital Democracy. From the program:

We are at a catalytic moment: Rapid technological change and entrepreneurial innovation have brought us closer than ever to full information citizenship. Egypt, Libya, even Wisconsin testify to the growing capacity of media to catalyze movement; change happens when people know what’s going on and can tell others.

But those same forces also threaten the public good by corroding the historical values of the information realm. In an everyone-a-content-creator-world, who can tell which information is trustworthy? It’s easy to author and distribute news and commentary – and equally easy to monitor and censor that content. Amid these tensions, the risk is that, rather than engaging, people simply disconnect – and movements lose their mass.

The challenge: Can we imagine a new, self-correcting information marketplace – an ecosystem for news and knowledge that effectively responds to, or even anticipates, whatever change happens? That ensures sustainable full information citizenship?

Looks to be an exciting, invigorating event. Hope you can join us.

Sustainatopia and the Social Venture Capital conference

In addition to Media2Movements on Wednesday, I’ll also be speaking at Sustainatopia twice on Monday:

Fashion icon Donna Karan will keynote and Rolling Stone magazine will lead a parade of international media organizations attending the Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise Conference, taking place Monday to Wednesday next week at the Miami Beach Convention Center. More than 300 speakers from 40-plus countries will participate.

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Facebook and other social media channels have been doing a decent job of providing additional marketing exposure and even in some cases, additional revenue. However, as more and more social networking sites pop up, how do you manage your brand across all these channels? Maybe more importantly, which one of these sites should you select as the one that will help you best reach your target audience? The proliferation of the social media avenues is becoming overwhelming.

This glut of information reminds me of the early 90’s when WWW was adopted broadly by the general public. Every company rushed to have a presence, to the point it became literally impossible to find the right information on the Web. That’s when a better generation of search engines – at first the Yahoo! and then Google – entered the market and helped us find the most relevant information by just typing simple keywords in their search box. If you had asked before Google launched, if there was a need for another search engine – most would have said no, we already have those….

Then came Web 1.0 & 2.0 – Youtube, Flickr, myspace, Facebook, Twitter and countless others have turned everyday people into content producers, influencers and experts. We basically tripled down on the information overload How do you know which channels to select for deploying your social media strategy? How do you know which one is the right channel to let your fans and followers to find you, your products, and services? Most importantly, who is Joe Smith that is recommending that person, that company, that product?

It’s time for social media to enter into a new category, a portal to provide a quick and intelligent decision for both the consumer and the enterprise about their online connections. To enable us to Distinguish Your Quality vs. Quantity Friends, Fans, Followers, and Companies

I hope I can accomplish such a mission with my new gig, awesomize.me. The site is not another social networking platform. Yet the portal to all your existing social media channels. The company helps you, your fans, your potential clients to make an intelligent decision as to which company to connect to or follow via which social media channels and why? It’s free!

Feel free to create your page and one for your blog or your company to see how it works.